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Monday, August 9, 2010

Rick Cooper's "Brief History" and the Defamation of Matt Koehl

Generally when I use the words Brief History on this Web log I am referring to an anonymous work.

However, before this anonymous work titled A Brief History of the White Nationalist Movement, there was another, much shorter work, with a very similar title, A Brief History of White Nationalism, written by Rick Cooper. Cooper at one time had been a member of Rockwell's National-Socialist White People's Party, and had some acquaintance with most of the people that his history attacks. Cooper was the NSWPP Business Manager from 12 August 1978 to 5 February 1980, under Matt Koehl.

When was this written? Cooper's reference to the former Church of the Creator property "recently sold" by Dr. William Pierce (in 1994) suggests that his Brief History was composed mainly in the mid-1990s. The final section called "Current State of the Movement" may have been written later. Cooper died in 2006.

Cooper's Thesis

Rick Cooper in his Brief History states a constructive purpose. He describes a transition from the Old to the New Movement. He sees this as progress and he wants to caution newcomers against being influenced by figures from the Old Movement.
The Old Movement, according to Cooper -- especially its uniform-wearing "nazi" aspect -- had started with financial support fr0m Jews and was laden with homosexuals. Cooper alleged that Jews were able to control the Old Movement (after the death of Rockwell) because it was led by immoral people with skeletons in their closets.

Cooper sees 1979-1984 as a transitional period, beginning with the Greensboro Incident and ending with the death of Bob Mathews. This was a period of financial difficulty for the existing White Nationalist organizations, but it was also a period in which more radical elements appeared.

During this 5-year period, most of the White Nationalist Movement activity was done by five groups, and most of the Movement activists were active with one of these five groups - the National Socialist White People's Party (NSWPP) under Matt Koehl, the National States Rights Party (NSRP) under J. B. Stoner and Dr. Edward R. Fields, the National Alliance under Dr. William Pierce, the New Christian Crusade Church (NCCC) under James K. Warner, and the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan (KKKK) under David E. Duke.

[...]

All of the above group leaders know each other, and each of these, except for Dr. Pierce, has something to hide in his personal life and/or background about which he is very sensitive and fears exposure to his supporters and general public as he knows such would cause him to lose his current relative position of prestige within the Movement - not to mention a significant decrease in financial support.

Only Dr. William Pierce, among the five members of the "clique" of "dinosaurs" left over from the Old Movement, had no such skeleton in his closet, but Cooper dismissed Dr. Pierce's activities as of little value.

The New Movement, as Cooper saw it, consisted of skinheads* and generally more adventurous people, who, he thought, could not be controlled by the Jews.

The vast majority of Movement activists today are Skinheads and other young people who know nothing about the con-artists who await them. It is unfortunate that many of our new activists and various supporters will learn about these dinosaurs (because they are outdated) and mossbacks (because they accomplish little) through bitter experiences. We hope to save a lot of people a lot of trouble.

To keep things in perspective, we must give credit where due. The Clique all contributed to the earlier stages of the Movement in their own ways. In fact, many of us entered the Movement through The Clique's organizations. Today, some of The Clique still contribute to the Movement and are worthy of support in some ways. We will not tell you whom to support, but we advise that you carefully weigh the pros and cons of those whom you plan to support before you make a final decision.

Cooper portrays the Old Movement as a rude beginning that should be surpassed with new leaders. In his addendum, "Current State of the Movement," Cooper identifies as "outstanding" figures Pastor Richard Butler, Tom Metzger, Gerhard Lauck, and George Dietz.

Cooper's Bias

One might disagree with Cooper as to the worthlessness of Dr. Pierce's work in the 1990s. Many people were brought into White Nationalism through Dr. Pierce's weekly radio broadcasts. The SPLC's Mark Potok has acknowledged that at the time of Dr. Pierce's death in 2002 the National Alliance was by far the most significant force in White Nationalism.

Cooper's disenchantment with Dr. Pierce may have been due to the fact that he refused to be drawn into any conflict with Matt Koehl. Cooper seems to have felt as if he were an outsider looking in on an old boys' club, which he resented and called "the Clique."

Some of Cooper's contentions, particularly the alleged homosexuality of Matt Koehl, seem to be beyond reason. Cooper maintains that contention even though he could find none of the documentation that he sought and even in spite of testimony to the contrary.

Cooper's main stated reason for believing that Koehl was a homosexual (apart from rumors about alleged incidents that Cooper could never confirm) is that Koehl, in spite of his high intelligence, was a weak leader who avoided dealing with problems. Since anybody who is intelligent (one might suppose) should be a good leader, Cooper explained Koehl's ineffectiveness as due to blackmail from Jews about his closeted perversion. Obviously this is quite a leap.

The rumor about Koehl, however, apparently had already existed.

Early in his Brief History, Cooper presents us with an alleged case of forced sodomy of a minor from 1955 where the alleged evil-doers were the three leaders of the Free Ezra Pound Committee: Matt Koehl, Eustace Mullins, and attorney Edward Fleckenstein, allegedly a Jew. That horrific incident sets the stage for Cooper's tale of progress.

But did it even happen?

That egregious crime, if we are to take the story at face value, was never prosecuted despite the arrest of the three culprits. Cooper could find no documentation even about the arrest despite visiting the police department where the arrest supposedly occurred and being allowed to view their arrest files. One of the three alleged homosexual rapists, Fleckenstein, is a well known attorney who was never disbarred.

I checked Google News Archives and found nothing. You can find news items from the 1950s mentioning Eustace Mullins, Matt Koehl, and Edward Fleckenstein, but nothing about this alleged incident. No news report about a homosexual rape by three "nazis"? I think that would have been reported in the New York Times. In 1955 they would have been lucky not to be lynched for such a crime.

This all seems highly unlikely.

Then Cooper recounts this rumor about something that allegedly happened in 1960:

Years later, Crommelin told former deputy commander of the American Nazi Party (ANP), Karl Allen**, that Mullins and Koehl were queers. Karl Allen later told former ANP member Christopher Bailey, and Chris then told Director Cooper in the early 1980s.

That story lacks credibility on its face simply because it is several generations removed from the source. Cooper was never able to verify that this incident occurred. Neither Admiral Crommelin nor Karl Allen responded to Cooper's registered letters about the matter in the early 1980s, nor was he able to find any court record of a restraining order that Crommelin had allegedly filed against Koehl and Mullins. Cooper left no stone unturned, and still came up empty-handed. J.B. Stoner also did not answer. Ed Fields did answer, but the answer that he gave wasn't what Cooper wanted to hear:

Director Cooper wrote to Ed Fields on February 28, 1982, asking specific questions about what happened to cause Admiral Crommelin to boot Eustace Mullins and Matt Koehl off his Wetumpka farm in late 1959 and 1960, as well as what he knew about Koehl's homosexual background.

At least Fields answered the letter, but his statement that he had heard nothing bad about Koehl is not believable - these guys all know each other going back at least 2 decades!

At some point you have to face the fact that what "everybody knows" might not be true. It might just be a rumor! People love their rumors.

Furthermore, the propagation of rumors as a means of fragmenting and demoralizing dissident groups had been standard practice for the FBI under COINTELPRO, 1956-1971.

The bottom line about Cooper's Brief History is that it is an expression of personal opinion, and Cooper really makes no secret that it is a biased opinion. Cooper says that Matt Koehl had "double-crossed" him 14 years earlier, although he does not explain how. We can infer from the fact that Cooper only quit working for Koehl in 1980 that he probably had ignored any rumors about Koehl until then.

While Cooper's history is biased and impeachable in its own way, the man at least took responsibility for what he wrote. Cooper specifically disapproved of anonymous rumormongering:

This report is not a continuation of Deguello, which is an anonymous 54-page report published in the 1970s and which contained a mixture of truth and lies about many prominent people in the White Nationalist Movement at the time. There is nothing sneaky or anonymous in this report.

Cooper vs. Covington

Behind Cooper's stated benevolent purpose of cautioning newcomers lurked a vendetta against Matt Koehl, and to a smaller degree against others like William Pierce and David Duke who didn't support that vendetta. From this personal motive he derived the generalization that the Old Movement was essentially bad. (The basic concept of the Old Movement, New Movement distinction probably comes from Richard Butler, who made some statement about the new, more radical generation of racial activists in the early 1980s.)

Covington (making use of Cooper's material in 2007) had gripes against Koehl too. Covington attacked Koehl under the pseudonym "Luther Williams" circa 1994 (and probably on other occasions too); thereafter Koehl supplied a packet of information to Will White Williams for his successful libel suit against Covington. Covington also had grudges against some of the other people that Cooper criticized, because some of the same people that had not cooperated with Cooper's vendetta also supported Ben Klassen and W.W. Williams in their conflict with Covington.

Moreover, it is a major theme in Covington's rhetoric that practically all White Nationalist leaders are unspeakably rotten (with the noteworthy exception of Covington himself). Cooper's generalization about the corrupt old guard vs. the idealistic newcomers therefore appears to support some but certainly not all of Covington's position.

Cooper's complaints thus provided convenient material for Covington. Large parts of Cooper's Brief History were incorporated into Harold Covington's anonymous Brief History without credit. Some parts were rewritten or augmented with commentary that twists the meaning. As usual, the changes made by Covington to his source material are almost entirely on the side of making it more defamatory. Covington also removes the indications of questionability that Cooper left in.

Since Cooper was recently (November 2006) deceased, nobody could consult him about the accuracy of these expanded attacks (appearing in 2007). We hear the protest that Rick Cooper wrote a lot of the material in the anonymous Brief History, and the similarity of titles between Cooper's work and the anonymous work adds to the confusion. Some careful reading will show that there are very significant differences between Cooper's work and what Covington did with it.

Removing Cooper's Expressions of Doubt

Covington plagiarizes Cooper's repetition of the rumor that Admiral John Crommelin had caught Matt Koehl and Eustace Mullins doing perverted acts in his basement in 1960, but he redacts Cooper's honest admission that he was never able to get confirmation and replaces it with this vague declaration:

Crommelin never made any secret of this incident and willingly discussed it with whoever was interested, and yet it stands as yet another example of the odd veil of secrecy which seems to shelter these early Movement figures such as Koehl, Mullins, and Benny Klassen when it comes to their perverse sexual predilections. Anyone who discusses these things, or attempts to discuss them, can never seem to get any traction on the issue and is usually silenced or victimized shortly thereafter in some odd way or another. Harold Covington has been subjected to years of vicious persecution, slander, and vilification because of his constant refusal to maintain a discreet and respectful silence over acts of perversion and skullduggery within the Movement, and his demands for the imposition of some kind or moral standards or code of conduct on the Movement’s self-appointed “leaders.”

Thus the fact that the whole account is questionable, which Cooper was sufficiently conscientious to let us see, is hidden from us by Covington, who furthermore cannot resist injecting a swipe at his favorite target, Ben Klassen, and an ironic promotion of himself as the only virtuous man in the movement.

Cooper very briefly, with a single subordinate clause, insinuated that there might be something questionable about Koehl's lineage.

Whether Koehl's actions are based on genetic background (His father is Rumanian and his mother's maiden name is Bierbaum) ...

That is the full extent of Cooper's speculation about Koehl's racial heritage. Covington took that one tin drum and built a whole marching band around it. The paragraph below is clearly an expansion of Cooper's brief comment because the parenthetical clause from Cooper reappears in pieces, and the rest of the paragraph is an attempt to answer the question "Whether Koehl's actions are based on genetic background" with an aye that will seem credible due to the large amount of verbiage devoted to it.

In the mid-1980s Rick Cooper was able to get hold of a copy of Matt Koehl’s birth certificate, and he discovered that while his father was Romanian, probably of German descent (there are many Saxon Germans in Romania) his mother’s maiden name was Ruth Bierbaum, which is about as Jewish-sounding a name as it’s possible for a woman to have. Since Ruth Bierbaum was presumably born in Romania as well, at a time when the country was almost one third Jewish, it has been impossible to establish Koehl’s actual racial antecedents, but his swarthy skin and greasy hair were always noteworthy within the Movement. There is an excellent probability that Koehl’s mother was Jewish, which would make him Jewish under rabbinic law, since descent is determined on the female side because “no one can truly know the father save the mother.” (A fancy Talmudic way of saying that Jewish women are such sluts that the mother is the only parent who can be reliably determined.) Plus there was the strong suspicion, never completely dissipated, that Koehl was somehow involved in Rockwell’s murder, as well as the constantly hovering rumors about the 1955 New York buggery case, and the well-known fact of Koehl’s open aversion to women.

Note that Cooper did not say that Koehl's mother's name was Ruth; he only gave her surname, Bierbaum, which is quite German. Covington added the Hebrew given name Ruth. Even if that is accurate, there is no reason why a woman named either Ruth or Bierbaum must be Jewish, and the other allegations to which Covington refers as forming a coherent picture with this allegation of Jewishness are not proven either. This is a lot of nothing being made to look like something simply by talking it up.

As for the alleged "open aversion to women" (offered as evidence for Koehl's being a Jew) it seems that Koehl enforced a rather old-fashioned moral code within the NSWPP that brought him into conflict with members (e.g. Joe Tomassi) who had embraced the looser morals of the 1970s, and who may have made some extravant accusations in response. Koehl has been married for several decades to the NSWPP's former office secretary, Barbara von Goetz.

Disagreement about Rockwell's Death and Why Koehl Succeeded Him

Regarding how and why Matt Koehl came to succeed George Lincoln Rockwell as leader of the NSWPP, Cooper writes this:

On August 25, 1967, George Lincoln Rockwell, Commander of the NSWPP, was assassinated in a laundromat parking lot in Arlington, Virginia, by John Patler [Patsalos].

The NSWPP members went through the protocol of selecting a new leader. The majority of the members present selected Major Matthias Koehl, Jr., to succeed as the new NSWPP leader.

[...]

Some of you people may wonder why anybody supported Matt Koehl at all but you must consider that many of these dedicated people were faced with the choice of NSWPP under Koehl or no NSWPP at all so, since there was no "proof" of Koehl's homosexuality or background, they backed Koehl.

Considering the other high ranking NSWPP members at the time, Dr. William Pierce, the NSWPP National Secretary, told Director Cooper personally that he often viewed Koehl as an "island of sanity amid a sea of insanity."

Compare the corresponding passage from the anonymous Brief History, which is not from Cooper but is an elaboration of a passage from Covington's 1998 "A Brief History of National Socialism in North America." The first sentence quoted below is verbatim from Covington's acknowledged work, except for the insertion of the name Matthias Koehl.*** Note the rumor-mongering and conspiracy-theorizing that is not found in Cooper:

Commander George Lincoln Rockwell was murdered in Arlington on Friday, August 25th, 1967, under circumstances which have never been satisfactorily cleared up, but which point to at least peripheral involvement on the part of Matthias Koehl, the man who succeeded him as leader of the Party.

[...]

The whole murder case has been buried for years, and several journalistic and literary attempts to re-open it have been met with a stonewalling and in some cases with outright threats and intimidation from official sources, which have frightened the would-be authors into silence.

[...]

The events immediately surrounding the death of Commander Rockwell are very murky. The NSWPP members allegedly went through the protocol of selecting a new leader, but many key members were not consulted.

[...]

There have been persistent rumors down through the years that on the night of Commander Rockwell’s murder, Captain Robert Lloyd and Dr. William Pierce broke into Commander Rockwell’s safe and destroyed his political testament.

Although Cooper hated Koehl, he represents the process whereby Koehl became the leader of the NSWPP as honest, and he admits that in some ways Koehl may have been the best man available for the job. Cooper does not insinuate that Koehl and some accomplices were involved in Rockwell's assassination. Those are embellishments that appear in Covington's anonymous Brief History but not in Cooper.

Cooper does give vent to a suspicion that there was more to the Rockwell assassination than just the lone nut "Patler," but he thinks that it was a Jewish conspiracy that put Patler up to it and not a conspiracy among leading members of the NSWPP.

The anonymous Brief History augments and twists Cooper's account of how Koehl succeeded Rockwell in order to convert it into a broad and lurid innuendo of conspiracy within the movement. Based on what? Based on completely vague claims and "persistent rumors" conveyed to us from an anonymous source who doesn't even say where he got it. We can say however that he didn't get it from Rick Cooper.

Cooper's View of Covington as a Source

Using the Wayback Machine I found this passage attributed to Rick Cooper. It was posted on Harold Covington's late 1990s "NSWPP" site by somebody calling himself John Hammer:

For a number of years now, our associates have questioned Harold Covington's sincerity in the Movement versus his psychiatric status after reading his allegations against other people and groups. Any investigation into this area would be merely academic. The important thing to understand is that Harold Covington, for whatever reason, is neither a reliable source of information nor competent to critique the Movement. (Rick Cooper, Editor, NSV Quarterly, Vol. 13, January-March 1995)

_____________________

* The anonymous Brief History differs with Cooper's Brief Historyabout the auspiciousness of the skinhead phenomenon, dismissing it as "an urban gang culture." Harold Covington just happened to use exactly those words in a 2004 essay, "The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Honky": "The one exception to the Protocols is Skinhead, which has wandered away from its origins and mutated into an urban gang culture, and now operates under those anthropological canons." This was probably an easier assessment to make in 2004 than in 1994.

** Assuming that Karl Allen really did pass on such a rumor -- which may not be true -- there is reason to be circumspect about Allen and his associates as sources of information about Koehl since their relationship with him and the rest of the post-Rockwell NSWPP (and indeed with Rockwell himself after 1964) was inimical for other reasons. A newspaper item from 1968 describes Karl Allen's relationship to the NSWPP at that time:

A schism -- of a type that probably caused Rockwell more trouble than any other single thing -- has developed into a complete split within the party. Rockwell used to call it "the problem of reconciling my thinkers, my intellectuals, and my doers, my strong men of action."

An FBI agent described it as "friction between the weirdos and the rednecks. The weirdos like to spin dreams about ruling the world. The rednecks want to go break heads."

However the two factions are characterized, the former is now grouped around Matthias Koehl in Arlington, and the latter around Karl Allen, of Alexandria, Va., late of the White Citizens Council, whose wing calls itself the "white party." The Arlington group busies itself with producing reams of literature, ranging from crude broadsides and reprints of that ancient hoax, "the protocols of the learned elders of Zion," to scholarly-looking quarterlies.

This report accurately states that there was a division among men who at various times had supported Rockwell, but the uninformed reader would understand this split to be a result of Rockwell's death, which it was not. Karl Allen had left Rockwell's organization and founded his American White Party three years before Rockwell's death. One would expect a certain amount of resentment between two such groups, and criticisms of the leadership of the post-Rockwell NSWPP attributed to Karl Allen should be considered in that light. To be fair however, the FBI agent's implied characterization of Karl Allen (a native of Tallahassee, Florida) as a "redneck" seems unfair given that Allen had elsewhere been described as "a dapper Harvard graduate" (The Miami News, 22 May 1962).

*** Covington avoided all mention of Koehl's name in A Brief History of National Socialism in North America, which is rather like avoiding any utterance of Goering or Goebbels in a history of the NSDAP. That work was openly connected to Harold Covington, unlike A Brief History of the White Nationalist Movement, wherein Covington libels Koehl from behind a thin camouflage of anonymity.

19 comments:

Although I agree with your statement that nobody has found any verifiable evidence to prove what Cooper wrote with respect to the 1955 sodomy incident, there are other statements in your article which are incorrect. I will address some of them here:

1. Edward Fleckenstein

Fleckenstein was gay and he was disbarred. You can read some background about his convictions and disbarrment here:

2. Homosexuality within the white nationalist movement was not an idea invented by Ricky Cooper. Four decades before Ricky Cooper wrote his "history", Fred Weiss instructed Mana Truhill to compile evidence about homosexuals within the "nationalist" movement. Among the persons about whom Truhill discussed in his report were: Eustace Mullins, Edward Fleckenstein and H. Keith Thompson Jr.

3. With respect to the alleged 1955 incident, this story may have been a very garbled version of another totally different matter pertaining to Eustace Mullins' relationship with a 16-year-old boy (William Suther).

4. It is also worth noting that many people within the white nationalist movement during the 1950's discussed the sexuality of their allies. For example: Elizabeth Dilling described Eustace Mullins' "sex crimes". George Lincoln Rockwell told the FBI that Mullins was homosexual. William Wernecke told the FBI that Mullins and Koehl were homosexual and that Admiral Crommelin had expelled them from his home when he learned about their sexuality.

In your article, you claim "stories" which circulated about sexuality of white nationalists were not credible because they were "several generations removed from the source". That is only true if you rely exclusively upon Ricky Cooper's narrative. Contemporaneous accounts were available (as indicated above) during the 1950's. This was more than just "rumor".

In the case of Mullins, for example, Mullins was hospitalized twice while he served in the US Army Air Corps (September 11-17, 1943 and again from December 14, 1944 thru February 29, 1945). The US Army psychiatrists who examined Mullins made a diagnosis of “constitution psychopathic state, inadequate personality, EPTI” and his doctors stated that "Mullins also exhibited both psychopathic and neurotic trends, both due to the same dynamic latent homosexuality..."

There is considerable more historical evidence but too lenghty to summarize here.

Okay, first: you say that the sodomy-accusation for 1955 "may have been a very garbled version of another totally different matter." So, you are admitting that this accusation, the worst accusation against Koehl in the whole story, is false.

You say that Mana Truhill's report "discussed" some nationalists who might be homosexuals, and you name some, but you do not name Koehl among them.

You have convinced me that Fleckenstein was a homosexual and that he was disbarred for committing homosexual acts with minors. I used the only information about him that I could find online when I was researching the matter in 2010, which was almost nothing. Now I have a more complex picture of Fleckenstein. This is not however evidence against Koehl.

You give some good information about Fleckenstein, but then you refer to the proliferation of rumors. Rumors are not evidence. There were rumors about Hitler and about Senator Joseph McCarthy that have no basis in real evidence. It is not valid to say: Ernst Roehm and Roy Cohn were queer and therefore Hitler and McCarthy were queer too. Rumors are used as a political weapon, and one has to maintain skepticism. If you have solid evidence, there is no good reason to refer to rumors. It implies that real evidence might be lacking.

As for Eustace Mullins, I am not inclined to doubt what you say about him, but where do you get this? The direct quote that you posted does not turn up on a Google search except where you yourself posted it elsewhere.

The only solid evidence that you offer against Koehl is the claim that William Wernecke is the source for the story about Koehl and Mullins in Crommelin's basement, and that he told this to the FBI. If that is true, it carries some credibility, since lying to the FBI is a felony. But where do you get this? Where is the document that confirms the story?

I am not "admitting that this accusation is false". I clearly stated that nobody has found verifiable confirming evidence for it.

Truhill's compilation of info for Fred Weiss was not merely a "discussion". It was a summary of what was known within the white nationalist community during the mid-1950's. I might add that Robert DePugh (founder of the Minutemen in 1960) also compiled a similar report but he updated the info.

You ask specifically about Matt Koehl. I can give you a more definitive answer in a few months. There are letters from Eustace Mullins to Koehl and Koehl's replies which I am in the process of obtaining. However, Mullins and Koehl were roommates in both New York City and Chicago and I suspect that they were sexually intimate. Koehl's sexuality is open to discussion but there is an ever-growing accumulation of data to support a reasonable conclusion that he was gay or bisexual --- as were so many other white nationalist figures.

With respect to Mullins: you ask where did I get my information. It comes from a variety of sources starting with his military service records. The other sources are interviews of white nationalists which appear in numerous different FBI HQ and field office files such as:

I currently have an FOIA request pending on Matt Koehl. The FBI has estimated about 2955 responsive pages pertaining to Koehl. Because this is a "large track" request, it probably will take at least another 12-16 months to be totally processed but I may receive interim releases starting in 5 or 6 months.

Before Koehl died in October 2014, I received sections 1 thru 5 of his FBI-Chicago field file but since he was still living when I made my request, there are numerous redactions of his name in the documents that were released to me. I also have an appeal pending regarding FBI processing of a related Koehl request. With any luck, that might produce another 1300 pages of documents within the next 6-12 months and, if so, I will post that file online.

Chicago informant told FBI that “Eustace Mullins left New York City during July 1956 to be near Matthias Koehl. Koehl and Mullins previously resided together in New York City and both were believed to be homosexuals.” [HQ 105-15727, #23, page 6 which is 1/19/59 report by Chicago Special Agent re info provided by informant CG-T3 on 07/17/56 who was described as having provided "reliable information" in the past.]

I "ask about Matt Koehl" because accusations against him are the focus of this article.

It would be nice if, when I ask your source, instead of posting a list of names, you would post a link. A list of names does not impress me. These are names of people who say what? That they heard the rumor too? You can post a scanned document on Archive.org.

And I do perceive that you have some bias in this matter. It is evident in your continuing reference to rumors and guilt-by-association, and in the fact that you do not abandon the forced-sodomy accusation even though we have no real evidence for it and it is unlikely that this could have happened without getting some publicity.

Nonetheless I accept your points about Fleckenstein. Do you also have information that he was a Jew? This is also claimed.

BTW---my personal belief is that Matt Koehl and Eustace Mullins were sexually involved with each other when they lived in New York City and in Chicago. In the future, as I acquire additional documentary evidence, I will be happy to share it with you -- if you are interested.

Hadding: As you probably know, there are 3 standards of proof for anything in dispute. They are:

Beyond a reasonable doubt -- evidence presented is so convicincing that there is no reasonable doubt about whatever is being disputed (such as guilt or innocence of a defendant OR whether or not a person is honest and truthful OR whether a statement or assertion is true or false).

Clear and convincing evidence --evidence presented produces a firm belief or conviction that it is highly probable that the factual contentions of the claim or defense are true.

Preponderance of the evidence -- evidence presented indicates that it is more likely than not that a contention is true.

Apparently, the ONLY evidence you will accept with respect to sexuality of Mullins or Koehl or anybody else, is some handwritten letter by that person explicitly acknowledging their sexuality.

The available evidence with respect to Eustace Mullins is beyond a reasonable doubt.

The types of evidence include:

(1) The two hospitalizations of Mullins during his military service when the psychiatrists who examined him concluded that he was a homosexual. "Latent" in their parlance merely referred to hidden and concealed. Keep in mind that during the 1940's and afterward, homosexuality was considered to be a mental illness.

(2) Contemporaneous correspondence by many of Mullin's closest friends and associates (and roommates) during the 1950's and 1960's in which THEY acknowledged that Mullins was gay. [Examples: John Kasper and William Wernecke.]

(3) statements made by persons who were closely associated with Mullins -- including (recently) emails I have received from the individual who arranged the speaking engagements for Mullins around the country who was frequently in Mullins' home. I also received emails several years ago (after Mullins died) from persons who purchased items for sale from Mullin's home -- including what they described as homoerotic art and other items.

(4) A statement by a 16yo boy who was Mullin's "boyfriend" {George Lincoln Rockwell described him as Mullin's "girlfriend") -- to the Juvenile Officer of the Melrose IL Police Department. The boy (William Suther) told the officer that Mullins was homosexual. This boy accompanied Mullins on a trip to New York in May 1959. Fred Weiss acknowledged that they arrived at his farm in Middleton NY.

There is also other evidence.

With respect to Matt Koehl -- I will be presenting more details in the future.

"Finally, I have always stood by Mullins for his many virtues. I have never condemned him as have others for being a notorious homosexual. I have seldom complained about anything he has done to me personally as I can understand (usually) some reason why he might do such a thing. However I was angry about the stupid remarks he made to Lyle Stuart editor of Expose in connection with yourself and Il Duce. They were stupid as stupid can be, ignorant, vulgar, and a hurt (I think) to yourself and himself." ...

Do YOU understand the meaning of the word "notorious" ??

It means: "generally known and talked of"

If John Kasper understood in 1952 (!!) that Mullin's homosexuality was "generally known and talked of" in the circles which Kasper and Mullins frequented -- why should we believe YOUR bizarre contention which disputes what Kasper knew? Particularly when you consider that Kasper's comment was repeated by other individuals who were quite familiar with Mullins -- such as Elizabeth Dilling, William Wernecke, Edward Fleckenstein, George Lincoln Rockwell and Ed Fields?

I am familiar with older psychiatric terminology, which you are misrepresenting. If Mullins was diagnosed as a "latent homosexual" in the 1940s it means that he was a man with homosexual tendencies who repressed them. It does not mean what you say, that he was a practicing homosexual who kept it secret.

Not to say that you don't have other evidence, but in that particular instance you are invidiously stretching the evidence.

Whatever the case may have been about Mullins, it still doesn't prove anything about Koehl.

Well, Hadding, we must agree to disagree regarding the meaning of "latent". Keep in mind that in the period we are discussing, virtually every homosexual in our country was "latent" because homosexuality was illegal in all states and was considered a mental illness. In those circumstances, only the most courageous individuals were likely to acknowledge their sexuality.

With respect to your question re: Kasper (when he and Mullins were roommates in New York City) -- neither I or you currently have any way to make a definitive statement. Kasper married and had children but many gay men were (and are) bisexual. Many entered into marriage in order to disguise their true inclinations.

BTW--with respect to Mullins sexuality being "latent" in the 1940's while in military service -- how many homosexuals in our military were NOT "latent" at that time? When you say that Mullins "repressed" his homosexuality and was NOT a "practicing homosexual" -- HOW DO YOU KNOW THAT? Are you personally familiar with the entire sexual history of Mullins during the 1940's when he was in his early 20's?

In your experience --at what age do most men become sexually active? Do you know when Mullins had his first sexual experience? and with whom?

The person who arranged Mullin's book signing and speaking tours (whom I mentioned in a previous message) described Mullins as follows -- and I will quote him directly here --

"ask anyone who knew him and you'll find out:* Had a very low opinion of women.* Loved manicures. (He would get one anytime he came to visit.)* Loved to wear gaudy rings (turquoise mainly).* Wore a bathrobe naked underneath at night and unfortunately flashed my (male) friend. Not sure if it was intentional.* Was a non-stop gossip."

You can draw your own conclusions.

With respect to Kasper -- I cannot definitively answer your question right now. However, I am in contact with Kasper's biographer and I will let you know if I receive any information from him that might address your question.

BTW-- I should mention that (unlike yourself) I do NOT describe Mullins or any other gay or bisexual person as a "pervert". In fact, I have no interest in the sexuality of Mullins or Kasper or Koehl etc. other than in the context of trying to understand their personalities.

One wonders what the effect would be on YOU, if you were confronted with enough factual data to prove that Koehl or Kasper or anybody else you admire was either gay or bisexual? Does it make any difference to you for some reason?

Although there is no direct evidence that Kasper was bisexual or gay, one of his friends (and another Ezra Pound acolyte), Sheri Martinelli did write a letter to Pound which suggested that Kasper had one homosexual experience. However, Sheri was drunk at the time she wrote that letter and she may have just been parroting gossip and no factual info. Kasper was better known for being a womanizer.

Today I had the opportunity to combine a lot of information which I compiled about John Kasper and I did an OCR scan so all the content is now searchable.

As a result, I came across several references to Kasper which better answer your previous question. I quote one relevant excerpt below:

A friend of Kasper who lived in Camden NJ told the FBI about a letter dated 11/3/50 which Kasper wrote to that friend. The friend is only identified by the initials "LBD".

Quoting from the FBI summary:

"In the letter, Kasper stated he was subject to extreme periods of depression, even when among people. The letter stated that he had had a very bad experience at the Riverside Academy, Gainesville, Georgia. Kasper stated that he had been a patient in a mental hospital for early homosexuality and for general neurotic behavior. He stated that he had been confined to the Pennsylvania Hospital, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania for schizophrenia." [FBI HQ 62-105095, serial #45, pages 12-13 which is part of a very lengthy Washington Field Office report dated 4/24/59 from their Kasper investigative file WFO 62-8028]

Kasper's hospitalization was apparently circa August 1946. At the insistence of his parents, he voluntarily committed himself into the hospital's Department for Mental and Nervous Diseases.

Another serial mentions that Kasper was rejected for military service and classified 4F "because of a psychiatric disorder".

Mrs. Lena C. Lett gave $3000 to Kasper so he could open his "Make It New" bookstore. She told the FBI that Kasper's bookstore was frequented by many "Negro and Chinese homosexuals" and Kasper seemed very friendly with them.